Truth and Consequences - Sometimes in the game of cops and robbers, telling your story is no defense
Denise Crawford looked at her new client and saw a defendant more desperate than most. After six months in jail, Desmond Haye had been ushered in for trial as a young man without much defense -- or even a defense attorney, for that matter.
State District Judge Jeannine Barr delayed the trial for two days, but Haye's first lawyer never showed up. Exasperated, she wound up appointing Crawford to defend him in June 2003.
A former prosecutor, Crawford anticipated another long story of despair and innocence spun by a street-savvy prisoner. Instead, she was silently impressed. "He had a calm about him -- I know I wouldn't be as calm if I was looking at potential life in prison," she remembers. "He was polite, a well-spoken young man."
To hear Haye tell it, the police just showed up at his Alief home that January and, for no reason, took him in as the gunman in gaudy hip-hop apparel who had robbed a Handy Stop check-cashing outlet five weeks earlier. He had his alibi: Haye and his wife both swore he was taking her to work rather than holding up some convenience store on Fondren...............
